Gods and Generals

This is a four and half hour long movie, which somehow seems to just barely scratch the surface of just about every subject that it touches is. It's a narrative mess that combines about a dozen different plot lines, and fails at executing any of them properly. The main character of the movie is Stonewall Jackson, yet even he feels like a minor character compared to the movie's story arc. Lots of attention in screen time is dedicated to the man, yet viewers still feel unconnected with him as they never really properly explain anything about the man, and we're largely bored and confused by his portrayal, despite even Steven Lang's masterful performance of the man. It's a great acting job yes, but we don't really know who it is he's portraying.

Instead of focusing on the main character, his background, why he was a truly great and complicated man, we're constantly distracted from him by many, many different plots. Jeff Daniel's Chamberlain, as seen in the previous movie, multiple unnamed union and confederate soldiers, townsfolk, lots of backstory of Robert E Lee, even John Wilkes Booth is portrayed, for some reason, for extended periods of time. All this time spent on story lines makes the viewer feel alienated and confused any time our main character, Stonewall appears, and we think, "Wait...who was this guy again?"

Jackson was indeed a fascinating character, probably the most fascinating of any of the confederates. He was modest weirdo of a man, employed as a professor at a military school, and was much despised by his students and fellow faculty because of his ineptitude as a teacher. He showed no sign of greatness, or even competence, whatsoever, before the war. He also seems to be a genuinely good man at heart, unconcerned with the conventions of the south aside from his ardent, zealous, devotion to Christianity. He created a bible school for slaves, teaching them to read, and the only slaves he owned were those he met through this, who actually came to him and requested that he buy them, knowing they'd be well treated under his roof. He was unconcerned with the politics of the war, and had always been against the notion of it. He fought for the confederacy simply because Virginia was his home, and that's what side it was on; which was the sole reason many other confederates fought.

What made him famous, however, was not his good nature but his absolute brutality, his single minded devotion to making his war as horrible and unpalatable to both sides of the conflict, in order, in his eyes, to reach the most humane goal of ending it quickly. Something dark and cold seemed to awaken in him, transforming this strange little professor into a rabid, brutal taskmaster of a general who saw men as merely a resource to expend in order to reach his next objective, which was always his sole concern. He forced march his men to death and starvation many times, in fact with regularity so, he constantly quarreled with his subordinates, court-martialing them for any perceived offense, openly admonishing their character and abilities, and he was an ardent believer in the "Black Flag," meaning no quarter for the enemy, all prisoners executed, no restraint shown in any way towards northern civilians (or even southern ones if necessary) or soldiers. He saw it as his godly duty to rampage, to show those who wished to see just what war was, and make them reconsider.

The film touches on the duality of the man, though very scarcely, very incompletely. It portrays him as basically a very good man, who just happened to be a successful general. When in reality he had become a deadly, horribly efficient destroyer of men, who just happened to be a very agreeable, if somewhat eccentric, good person at heart. The film, of course, doesn't get much into that dark side of him, which is shame because it's really the soul of the story, and we're left with a basic question that is never answered: why are we even watching this? What's interesting about him? Why are we watching a four and half hour long movie about this ultra-christian dork?

Of other note, Robert Duvall is pretty mediocre in is role as Robert E. lee, he resembles the real person more than Martin Sheen did, but lacks the command, the gravitas the later possessed. The film also has some of the absolute worst CGI scenes I've ever seen. In general ,the Battle scenes are more well done than Gettysburg, it does a much better job at depicted the massed numbers of men involved as opposed to the previous movie which seems to show Pickett's last charge as a couple hundred dudes marching through the field as opposed to the ten thousand or so it was in reality.

But at the end of it all, after watching this movie many times over the years, I'm left scratching my head, and trying to figured out: what story was it they were trying to tell here?

`Gods and Generals' plays less like a movie and more like a three-hour-and-49-minute long lesson in Civil War history. Grueling and plodding, the film is almost the antithesis of `Gone With the Wind,' in that while both films are epic tales told from the viewpoint of the defeated South, `Gods and Generals' (unlike the earlier film) has been essentially drained of all emotion, drama and characterization. `Gods and Generals' may be a more `realistic' war film than `Gone With the Wind' (what wouldn't be?), but it's not nearly as entertaining.

`Gods and Generals,' which begins right after the firing on Fort Sumter and ends shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg, is the first part of a planned trilogy. Despite a handful of `name' players in the cast (Robert Duvall, Jeff Daniels, Mira Sorvino and even Ted Turner in a ludicrous cameo appearance), writer/director Ronald F. Maxwell is unable to bring a single character in his film to convincing life (with the possible exception of `Stonewall' Jackson, who gets to carry the burden of what little drama the film has almost single-handedly). In lieu of dialogue, the actors spend most of their time looking wistfully up to heaven or scanning the mist-shrouded horizon while delivering endless homilies about the rightness of the cause and the place of God in human affairs. To keep it all palatable for more enlightened and egalitarian-minded modern audiences, the filmmakers are quick to have the Southern characters declare that, even though the South is forced to fight against the North to protect its God-given right to sovereignty, they, as individuals, are all personally opposed to slavery as an institution and firmly believe that their resident blacks will be freed someday as a matter of course. Hell, the Northerners in this film seem more prejudiced against black people than the Southerners, who just can't say enough good things about their sycophantic slaves.

The battle scenes, though well staged and appropriately graphic in nature, are strangely unmoving, primarily because we have no emotional stake in any of the characters we see doing the fighting. Without anyone for us to focus on and care about, the audience becomes little more than curious bystanders, passive and unengaged observers of this brutal display of ritualized slaughter. Although the visuals are splendid throughout, the musical score, except in a few places, is like a thick, heavy syrup poured over the entire film.

By providing subtitled identification of the principal people, places, dates and battles, `Gods and Generals' does provide a service as a history lesson of sorts. As a drama, however, the film is woefully lacking in every way imaginable. `Gods and Generals' may thrill the heart of the diehard Civil War buff. The rest of us will have to stick to our dreams of Scarlett and Rhett, and of a romanticized vision of the South that only a Golden Age Hollywood mogul would have dared come up with.

The theater version was a snooze. It's much longer than what they released in theaters because people complained about the length of Gettysburg. But totally worth it. Watch it in two evenings, treat it like a miniseries, if length bothers you.

I remember reading about the Director's Cut on the old IMDb forums, they said the theater version left major important parts. Add those back in, and it clicks.

With the missing parts in, it's almost as good as Gettysburg, and Stephen Lang's "Sappy Stonewall" is much less irritating. In the theater we were counting the minutes until the next cry, and coughing to wake up the snoring history buffs all around us.

Ps I miss those forums. For things like this alone, they were gold.

If you knew absolutely nothing about the American Civil War you might come away from Gods and Generals believing something like this: A sociopath named Lincoln decides one day in 1861 to raise an army to invade the south because he just feels like doing that. The people of these south, having absolutely nothing to deserve any of this, start their own country to defend themselves and a polite, bearded, General named Lee leads them and this other polite, bearded, General named Jackson is his second in command. Because God is on their side, the kind, virtuous, heroic, men of the southern army prevail in several combat engagements against the godless, sex-crazed, murderous barbarians of the north. Jackson and Lee deftly direct the outnumbered army of Jesus against the unwashed Yankee heathen and wins the war except that he got shot by one of his own men by accident and dies otherwise the south really won.

Yep, that's just what you might believe. If you took history from this film.

Gods and Generals is a confused, heavily pro-Confederate, train wreck. It attempts to span two years of the war though the perspective of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, arguably one of the most brilliant field commanders West Point has ever produced. Like it's antecedent Gettysburg it is of epic length except that Gettysburg actually made sense. This film is all over the place. Focuses on non-pivotal battles and is bloated with nonsensical dialog and close ups of men talking to themselves in archaic,sanctimonious, soliloquies. There are no issues, there are no cassus belli,no internal conflicts, there is only a clumsy even bizarre celebration of the confederacy; depicted as an embattled yet righteous society defending their way of life against their tyrannical northern overlords. There is one mention of Fort Sumter, a passing nod or two to slavery, and the rest is the Lee/Jackson traveling show. Overall a sloppy production which screams lousy direction and lack of focus. I felt the book told the story of Jackson in much more coherent style than this mess.

To it's credit, it does have very graphic and disturbing battle scenes where both sides are, at times, honored and portrayed with equanimity.

However, G&G, like Gettysburg (a MUCH better directed film), had potential to evenly instruct and entertain. That's where the similarities between the two films ends Gods and generals is a ponderous, rambling, confusing, tribute to the CSA. Aside from it's endless length it jumps around way too much, lacks proper character development and historical veracity, which is far too extensive to get into for the purposes of a review. I will say that Stephen Lang was magnificent as Jackson, but I wasn't terribly impressed with Robert Duvall as Lee. It is no wonder it bombed at the box office. It's just not very watchable, at least not in one sitting. It might be of interest to those, like myself, who are interested in civil war films. This one is a grave disappointment.

Although Duvall resembles R.E. Lee much more than Martin Sheen in "Gods", Sheen gives a much more personified performance as Lee in "Gettysburg".

I find it interesting how almost no emphasis is put on any commanding Union general in either film, with only about 2 minutes of dialouge between Hancock and Burnside before the disaster at Fredericksberg. It should always be noted that Lee's early victories can be credited equally on the Union commanders utter incompotence as well as Lee's exeptional stratigic ability.

I'm sure "The last full measure" (the final film of the trilogy) will put a fair amount of emphasis on General Grant as he assumes command for the Army of the Potamac in 1864. I just hope we dont have another 10-year interval between films.

They are both great films. They have not been the box-office hits because of their legnth and a lack of hard-core history lovers to pay up at the theatre. I'm sure that "Gods" will be aired on TBS soon in a 2 part "mini-series" format to very good ratings as "Gettysberg" did.